He may be a seven-term congressman, who’s now Chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee, but on first blush Mr. Ryan looks and acts like the average white yuppie dad you’d see tailgating at a Green Bay Packers game in his native Wisconsin.

He’s conservative – having worked for Republican stalwarts William Bennett, Jack Kemp, and Sam Brownback early in his career. He may not get as rhetorically fired-up as some Tea Party icons, but he’s certainly in sync with Tea Party philosophy, telling a Monitor opinion writer recently, “The progressive movement and ideology is a repressive, big-brother movement that drains you of your freedom and liberty, and therefore of your prosperity... The government is taking away your discretion, taking away your choices.”